The need for a collaborative, multivolume history of libraries in the United States -- one that will place library history within the context of book history -- will be addressed on Sept. 12, 1995, in a lecture by Kenneth E. Carpenter, assistant director for research resources at Harvard University Library.
Mr. Carpenter's presentation, sponsored by the Center for the Book, is titled "Libraries and Readers: Towards a History of Libraries and Culture in America." It will take place at 6 p.m. in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the Madison Memorial Building, and is free and open to the public.
"Library history is cultural history," said John Y. Cole, director of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, in announcing the center's sponsorship of the lecture and a invitational conference of leading library and book historians on Sept. 12-13. The goals, feasibility and possible content of a new history of libraries and culture will be discussed at the meeting, Dr. Cole said, as well as such a work's potential relationships to other publishing projects in book and cultural history.
A widely published library historian, Kenneth E. Carpenter also has been editor of the Harvard Library Bulletin since 1980. In 1983 he edited Books and Society in History, a pioneering volume in the development of the field of the history of books in the United States. From 1989 to 1994 he was the chair of the executive committee of the American Antiquarian Society's Program in the History of the Book in American Culture.
History of Print Culture Conference Scheduled. More than 26 papers will be presented on May 5-6 in Madison, Wis., at "Print Culture in a Diverse America," a conference sponsored by the Center for the Book and the Center for the Study of Print Culture in Modern America. Conference sessions are: "Pushing the Envelope: Black Authors as Publishers"; "To Be Noticed and Recognized: The Black Use of Print"; "Reflecting Cultures in the 20th Century Asian Press"; "Gendered Print: Race and Radicals"; "Different Worlds, Different Times: Gendered Expressions in Two Cultures"; "Buried Stories: Almanacs and Cookbooks as Print Culture"; "The Tortured World of Publishing: Two Case Studies"; "Image in Memory: Studies of an Event and a People"; and "Transformation of Communication: Race and Print in America."
Registration for the conference is $30 per person ($15 for students). Registration must be received by April 27. Checks should be made out to the Wisconsin History Foundation and mailed to Maureen Hady, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 815 State St., Madison, WI 53706. For further information, phone (608) 264- 6598.
The Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America is a joint project of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Madison that is designed to help determine the historical sociology of print in all its culturally diverse manifestations. For information contact Wayne A. Wiegand and James P. Danky, codirectors, School of Library and Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, phone (608) 263-2914, FAX 608- 263-4849.
Conference on Dime Novels Announced. The Center for the Book and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division are sponsoring a conference on Dime Novels at the Library on June 9-10, 1995. For details, see p. TK.
Conference on Book Catalogs at Grolier Club. The Center for the Book was a sponsor on Jan. 24, 1995, of an invitational conference on "Book Catalogs: Their Collecting, Preservation, Cataloging and Use." The meeting was organized by the Bibliographical Projects Committee of the Bibliographical Society of America "to pry out information about catalogs, collections of catalogs, and uses of catalogs; and in order to build solidarity among those responsible for collections and their catalogs, indexes, bibliographies, projects and use." Larry Sullivan, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, was the Library's representative.
LC Symposium Volume Receives Good Reviews. "Armbruster's collection serves an extremely important function," says a review of Publishing and Readership in Revolutionary France and America (Greenwood Press, 1993) in the Winter 1995 issue of Libraries & Culture. This is one of several recent favorable reviews of the book, which is edited by the European Division's Carol Armbruster and based on a 1989 symposium at the Library of Congress sponsored by the Center for the Book and the European Division.
The other reviews have appeared in The Library Quarterly, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America and WESS Newsletter, published by the Western European Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries.
The essays in the volume, contributed by 12 prominent French and American historians, are presented in four sections: "Publishing as a Profession," "Publishing and the Law," "Reading" and "Collecting and Using Materials."
The authors are Roger Chartier, Robert Darnton, LC's James Gilreath, Jane C. Ginsburg, David Hall, Carla Hesse, Lynn Hunt, Marcus A. McCorison, Daniel Roche, Michael Warner and Larzer Ziff.
The volume is available in the LC Sales Shop and by mail for $45. If ordering by mail, add $3.50 for postage and handling. Orders should be sent to the Library of Congress Sales Shop, Washington, DC 20540- 5240. Credit card orders may be placed by phone at (202) 707-0204.
SUNY Press to Publish LC Symposium Volume. The State University of New York (SUNY) Press has announced publication in July 1995 of The Book in the Islamic World: The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East. Edited by George N. Atiyeh, head of LC's Near East Section, the volume is based on a 1990 symposium at the Library of Congress sponsored by the Center for the Book and the Near East Section. For information call the SUNY Press at (607) 277-2211.
NOTE: The complete listing of participants in the Center for the Book's Library-Head Start-Museum partnership workshop in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 23-25 (see LC Information Bulletin, March 20, 1995) was inadvertently truncated. For a complete listing, write the Library of Congress, Center for the Book, Washington, DC 20540-8200.
